


A Little Touch of Wonder

by Margaery



Category: Tennis RPF
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Wimbledon (tournament)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-08
Updated: 2013-07-08
Packaged: 2017-12-18 02:04:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/874437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Margaery/pseuds/Margaery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After his Wimbledon victory, Andy talks to Kim about one of the questions the press has been asking him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Little Touch of Wonder

“So,” Andy says, the dazed look still in his eyes.

They’ve finally given him back to her, after whisking him away for hours of press and photos and everything else that comes with being the new-crowned Wimbledon champion. Kim thinks the Queen even called. If Kim was the Queen, she’d be focused on the imminently arriving heir to the Crown, but she supposes the Queen hasn’t been Queen for so long without learning to multitask.

Kim’s no stranger to multitasking herself. While Andy’s been making his way through the endless interviews, she’s been hugging everyone and smiling for millions of pictures and trying to keep Judy from groping Gerard Butler’s arse. (Put oceans of free champagne together with an ecstatic mum, and then toss in Butler and Bradley Cooper to boot… luckily Gerard Butler is a doll and very forgiving.) 

“So,” Kim says, and smiles up at Andy.

They only have a few moments, standing together in an anteroom. Before they have time to properly catch their breath, Kim knows they’ll be whisked away to the Champions’ Ball. Her shoes will no doubt pinch, and her head's already aching from the afternoon’s furore, but she wouldn’t miss a moment of this for the world. 

Andy looks tired, but he’s also – well, this might be the champagne talking (Kim’s had a bit herself, in between confiscating glasses from Judy), but it almost looks like he’s _glowing_. After the US Open he mostly looked relieved, years of tension ebbing out of his shoulders in one wonderful moment, but now he’s – happy, perhaps? Satisfied? There’s not just an absence of tension in his eyes, there’s the presence of something more...

Even as they smile at each other, though, Andy’s eyebrows draw together, and she sees him worry his bottom lip with his teeth. “Something wrong?” she asks, lightly. “Did you forget something?” A thought occurs to her. “Tell me you haven’t forgotten the trophy.”

He grins at that. “They’ve got it there. I think they’re afraid I’ll break it.”

“I wonder why they’d think that,” Kim teases, reaching out to straighten his bow-tie.

Andy’s still hesitating over something, though, and he brings a hand up to hers, stopping her fingers. “Kim…” he says. She can see him thinking through his words, see the moment he decides _to hell with it_. “I got asked if I’d thought about proposing to you on court.”

She quirks an eyebrow. “Because that’s exactly the sort of thing you’d do.”

Andy smiles, a quick upturn of his lips, but his eyes are still anxious. “Yeah. But, um…”

For a moment, Kim can see it – Andy, taking the mike at the end of his victory speech, turning to his box, turning to her. Andy, stammering through an awkward impromptu proposal, her own heart jackhammering in her throat. Or maybe Andy keeping it simple – _Kim, you know what you mean to me. I love you. Will you marry me?_

But it’s not him, not like that, it would never be him. She closes her eyes for a second to clear the picture. 

When she opens them again, the faint worry lines in Andy’s forehead have reappeared. 

She smiles at him. “Who asked a silly question like that? Maybe they meant to ask Novak – that sounds a bit like his style.”

But Andy’s stubborn, and when he’s got something in his teeth he doesn’t let go easily. “I just,” he says, and searches her face with his eyes. “Did you want me to?”

Two questions there, Kim thinks. Did you want me to propose at Wimbledon, on Centre Court, with the trophy in my arms, like something out of a film, the happy ending of all happy endings? That’s one.

“No, silly,” she says, squeezing his arm with her free hand. “This is your moment, your day of glory. Plus, you already got the girl today.”

Andy looks confused.

“The trophy,” she clarifies, grinning at him.

“You’re gendering my trophies now?” Andy asks, his tone dry and flat, but the kind of dry and flat that means he’s laughing on the inside. 

“Yes,” Kim says, and finishes straightening his tie. “I do believe I am. Problem with that?”

“How do you tell?”

“I just do,” she says, patting his shoulder and leaning up for a quick kiss. “You don’t mind, do you?”

Andy’s smiling at her, more softly than he would in public. “As long as you don’t name them.”

“Deal,” Kim says, reaching down to pull a hair off his suit. The pictures they take at the Champions Ball may not show up on the front of all the newspapers, like the ones of Andy clutching his trophy, but she wants him to look dapper anyway. 

“Kim.”

Her name sounds like a caress in his mouth, and when she looks up his eyes are suddenly sure, no trace of their earlier anxiety. “You know I would,” he says. “If you want me to, I’ll do it tonight in front of everybody. I don’t have a ring, but I’ve got a Wimbledon trophy, I guess.”

“I think you’d get thrown out of the All England Club if you gave me the trophy,” Kim says, laughing, because she doesn’t quite know what to say, because if the first question is _did you want me to propose on Centre Court_ , the second is _do you want me to propose_.

Andy’s looking at her, eyes searching, but he lets her deflect. “I’m not a…well, I guess I _am_ a member now. Huh.”

And then suddenly Kim knows what to say after all. “You know what I think?” she asks, looping her arms around Andy’s neck.

She feels his hands settling on her waist, heavy and familiar, warm through the thin fabric of her gown. “What do you think?” he asks, his voice slightly husky.

“I think,” Kim says, smiling up into the face of the conquering hero, “that if I wanted to get married as badly as the papers think I do, I’d have proposed to you myself by now.”

Andy’s eyebrows go up, and then he’s laughing with her. Snorting, rather, and it’s not exactly the most conventionally attractive laugh, but she loves it because it’s his. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. You’re no quiet little princess.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” she says, reaching a hand up to pull him down into a kiss. Too late, she realises she’s messed up his hair. Oops. Oh well, it’s not like anyone’s expecting Andy’s hair to be _perfectly_ done. (In fact, it’d be entirely out of character.)

Besides, she can’t bring herself to mind when Andy’s mouth is on hers, warm and open and wonderful, and if the entire legion of British tennis journalists were to descend on this room at this very instant, she’d still finish this kiss. He may be theirs, he may belong to the press and the spectators and the nation, but he’s also hers.

When they break apart at last, Andy touches her cheek, his eyes soft. “When I propose to you,” he says, clearly and easily, no hesitation now, “it’s just going to be the two of us.” He pauses, then grins. “And maybe Maggie and Rusty.”

“They like to be where the excitement is,” Kim agrees, and kisses him again.

She may knock his bowtie askew in the process, but she can fix that later. They’re Andy and Kim, they’re on top of the world, and nothing can bring them down.

~~~~~&~~~~~~

Later, on their way into the ball after they get their pictures taken, Kim looks up and catches Andy’s eye. He’s nervous again, she can tell, but only the low-level “hates public speaking” nerves, not the crippling “weight of a nation” nerves. His hand in hers is warm and steady.

“Can I ask you something?” Andy says.

Kim squeezes his hand. “Go for it.”

He grins. “Keep an eye on my mum? Whatever you do, don’t let her go home with Ivan.”

Kim’s pretty sure that Judy has been carrying on what she thinks is a top-secret flirtation with Toni Nadal for the last two months, but that’s certainly not a suspicion she’s about to share with Judy’s son anytime soon. “I won’t let her go home with Ivan, I promise," she says, laughing, covering her mouth with her hands.

“Good,” Andy says, still grinning, as people come to tell them where to go and stand.

His eyes are still shining, free from anxiety, and she thinks she’s finally identified the ‘something more’ lingering in them, because she feels it too.

Joy. Pride. And a little touch of wonder.

Kim slips her hand into Andy's. “Take me to the ball, Wimbledon champion.”

“I could get used to that,” Andy says, after a moment, his voice not quite cracking.

(He’ll hear it for the rest of his life. It’ll become part of his name, _Andy Murray, Wimbledon champion_. It has a nice ring.)

“Do,” Kim says.

They smile, and walk hand-in-hand towards the post-Wimbledon world.


End file.
